Defend your vice.

i'd rather be home, originally uploaded by deepwarren.

I started scribbling cause i was bored at lunchtime. Previous to 1st year high school, i'd been home schooled, and then sent to a state school about 50m from home. I spent a lot of year 7 not at school. So enforced attendance in a small christian school of about 40 high schoolers (year8-yr10) was pretty dull. Specially that hour at lunch, where if you didn't have anyone in particular to hang out with, then you were screwed.

I took up computing. Which was fun. Unfortunately it was at the boys end of the school, and for one reason or another (boys and girls didn't mix - which meant I had about 7 people to talk to) it was discovered that I had been mixing with boys. Which was not allowed. I do remember being very annoyed at this. It seemed unfair, especially since there wasn't that much interest from the boys (not in the computers, and certainly not in me).

So I started drawing. I found some draw cartoons book, and I was bad. But the art teacher made some encouraging noises, and I found out that scribbling was a vice that whittled away the hours, got you lost in your own little world, and created a nice feedback loop between me and the outer world.

It also tends to show my preoccupations. I quite liked drawing dicks for a while (little harmless ones rather than throbbing raging erections). Boxes, and all there mysteries was another.

I think I vowed that I would stop drawing at 30 if I had achieved nothing. As I've gotten older, I've drawn less. Stopping has proven more difficult than I thought. I'd like to think that when I retire I'll be curled on the couch with the dog, watching the Bill (still!) with a sketchbook on my lap.


Why would you quit?

War injuries

5 things you can't see:

• At 5, i thought i could climb a cupboard: 5 stitches in my forehead just above my hairline.
• At 7, i tripped over the pram my sister was playing with. 12 stitches in my shin. I pulled them out myself after 6 weeks with the help of one of my dad's friends who was a nurse. It was faster than waiting at emergency.
• At 11, a broken wrist from roller-skating that went undiagnosed for about 10 days due to me being able to wriggle my fingers. The doctor offered to rebreak my wrist. I declined.
• At 13, 2 stitches in my toe after tripping over a dead sting-ray.

Many people think that being 'accident-prone' as a child is an attention seeking device.

Don't mention the war

Recently I've had a black eye. This was not the first black eye I've had, but definitely the easiest. I am a little clumsy, and the mixture of girlie shoes, alcohol and me has created a history of silly falls. Black eyes aren't such a good look for a girl, as people tend to assume that

1. you're in an abusive relationship
2. you've been mugged lately
3. you would appreciate some advice about the nature of abusive relationships
4. you're the 'wrong' sort, and they distance/cower a little bit from you *this happens as you get older, and don't look so butter-won't-melt.
   

All in all, it's not the best. Cause strangely, unless people know you, they don't ask. Even when they do know you, unless they know you well, they don't ask. They will stare pointedly at your face. After having told most the office that i faceplanted on a friend's bike tire, the last person to ask got the 'happened during rough sex with the bf' story. I like to think that it's a testimony to the high esteem he holds me in, that it took him 2 days to ask if that was true.

The first major black eye i got after fainting face first in a crowded cafe in the middle of the afternoon. That one resulted in stitches to the chin, split lip and 2 black eyes. Not good. I was about 25, and house sitting in a strange suburb. I have never been so consistently humiliated in my life than that week of complete strangers asking me what happened. Most of the humiliation was at the thought, that THEY could think that I would have let some guy do this to me, and NOT tell. The implication that I was hiding abuse. Now that was humiliating.

To be fair, 10years later I just keep staring straight back at people, whereas then with a bruised face, black eyes, and a chin full of stitches, I'd ducked the gaze. And avoidance suggests guilt, complicity, and fear.

Go Tahs!

Go Tahs!
Originally uploaded by deepwarren

About a month ago, I went and saw my first live rugby union game. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't adrenaline-pumping roaring crowds energy that I thought might be there.

Surprisingly enough, I enjoyed it.

Floating downstream

Originally uploaded by deepwarren

The last few weeks have been frantic, between attempting to get a work project finished and trying to get good routines going again after the holiday break. Today I got a film developed, that I'd had taken in Laos while tubing down the river. I'd brought a disposable underwater plastic camera rather than risk my dslr. I am rather clumsy, and a watery death for my camera would have been a likely outcome.

So I got the photo's back and they seemed magical. All blurry and yellow-ed, and taken in eariier era, rather than 4 months ago. And thinking about it, you feel the shoulders relax, and remember the feel at looking at towering mountains with yr bum in a rubber ring.

Travel is a beautiful thing.